Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The web economy has not only transformed business globally, it has also created a number of difficult challenges and opportunities for businesses in the accounting profession.

Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses

Now, more than ever, accountants must find smarter ways to stand out from the competition, find new business, and retain current clients. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having a dynamic web presence and learning smarter ways to grow your business online.

In addition to spending money in offline marketing activities, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other accounting businesses, you will need to assign a bigger share of your budget to develop and manage a website that can bring new prospective clients, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help to increase your marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website may change over time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires having a sound website and content management strategy.

Another challenge that accountants face, as other professions do for that matter, is that they have only about thirty seconds or less to provide visitors with what they are searching for or they will look elsewhere.

“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”

Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website

Opportunities For Certified Public Accountants In The Digital Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting profession that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and think outside the box in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

This guide will help you uncover ways to attract and engage more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform to power your accounting website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system, see these articles:

• How A Poorly Designed Website Can Cost You Business And What To Do About It
• WordPress And Small Business – A Beginner’s Guide To Growing Your Successful Small Business With WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Website

In this section we will show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages a financial services site needs, what content works best for accounting websites, useful tips for improving your site’s navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: How To Plan Your Small Business Website: A Money-Saving Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Improve Your Web Pages

All business websites require several essential pages. Let’s review these.

Products And Services Page

It’s essential to have a page that explains your services and products.

It will include all the products and services you offer, such as:

• Business – business planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, budgeting, financing, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate finance
• Wealth creation
• Superannuation/retirement plan (401k) advice
• Audit risk assessment and assurance
• Quickbooks – setup, training, tune up, and support
• Specialist services – mergers, acquisitions, information technology, secretarial, rentals, trusts, fiduciary accounting, succession planning, selling a business, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, community participation, etc.

This page should list any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote the company and set it above other competitors.

(List all of your industry awards recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc. in your About Us page. Screenshot image source: deloitte.com)

Team Profile

Are you searching for quicker, easier and cost-effective ideas to grow your business online or get people to stay longer on your site? Then something you can do, is help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust your business better.

Potential clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not familiar with accounting terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your team members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline your employee’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a team profile page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to create and add a simple and easy-to-maintain list directory of staff or team members to your website with no coding skills required, refer to this tutorial: How To Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

We’re Hiring

This is a listing of career opportunities available within the organization. This page should include training offered, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include case studies of recruits who have risen within your company and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Also include a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your announcements list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show potential clients them minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients, you are also helping to establish social proof online.

(Add a web page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Screenshot image source: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively on using client case studies and reviews to improve your business results online. If you are interested in learning more about this here: Improve Your Sales Conversions With Captivating User Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is essential.

It should include the following information about your firm:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Address of office
• Telephone number
• Fax
• Email address
• Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – contact details
• Links to social media profiles
• Online chat feature (optional)

If you have multiple areas you want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ section, main pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like news and events, company updates, useful articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an accounting or financial services website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your services.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting or financial services website is hard to add new content to or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can serve as both your website and your blog.

Very few businesses know that WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation system that will begin attracting a stream of targeted traffic to your website, simply by adding regular content to your web site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive traffic automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more about this: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Driving More Web Visitors Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Information Pages

As a professional accountant or financial services provider, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucial, not just for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being breached wherever you provide services to.

Depending on what services you provide, adding the legal pages below to your accounting website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

To learn more about adding legal pages to your website, see this article: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ways To Improve Your Web Content

In today’s fiercely competitive online economy, being generous with content that educates and informs readers has become one of the key success factors for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

Providing great content with useful information and tips will get your visitors sharing your web pages and coming back for more. Content marketing is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business.

For example, for an accounting business, topics can cover the following:

• How balance sheets work
• Profit and loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning advice
• Business insurance
• Risk prevention
• How to structure your self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing insurance, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as finance accounting, small business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, understanding financial conventions, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords and terminology in your articles that prospective clients will be searching for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information that will show you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving your site’s user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.

Use RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your business.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing great content on your website from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website, search online for tax-related government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are examples of RSS feeds you may want to add to your accounting website:

• Taxation Policy Center: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/press/rss.cfm
• Australian Taxation Office: https://www.ato.gov.au/RSS-news-feeds.aspx
• Canada Revenue Agency: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/rssfeeds/
• UK HM Revenue and Customs: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rss/rss.htm
• South Africa Revenue Service: http://www.sars.gov.za/Pages/RSS-Feeds.aspx

(RSS feeds can help to improve your website’s UX.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to increase user engagement and add value to your audience. They can provide useful instructions and resources to complete a necessary task. They are great planning tools.

You can provide a range of online or downloadable checklists and forms covering topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Company Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Provide Unique Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are popular tools for accounting websites. Other tools can include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part two, we look at a several online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins and themes that can improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

Click on this link to continue:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins

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